90 WANDERINGS AND MEMORIES 



Orkneys. The male weighed 28 lbs. After skin- 

 ning the head we had strips off the breast for 

 supper. They tasted much like third-rate beef, 

 tough and stringy, but were a nice change to the 

 perpetual duck and Golden Plover, of which we 

 were now getting a trifle weary. Thus ended a 

 most delightful and exciting day's sport — one of 

 those red-letter days which the hunter can look 

 back upon with real pleasure — ^the very best 

 combination of stalking, shooting and fishing. 



Next day we made the wonderful ice caves of 

 Kalmanstunga. Armed with candles Thorgrimmer 

 led us down a steep rocky declivity into the bowels 

 of the earth, when we suddenly found ourselves 

 on the ice-laid floor of a wonderful chamber several 

 hundred yards long. The floor was of perfectly 

 smooth ice, and on each side our candles lit up 

 wonderful pyramids of ice like huge bridal cakes. 

 The place was bitterly cold, and after wandering 

 about into many side channels where galleries and 

 retreats have been cut out by the prehistoric 

 Icelander as dwelling-places, we were not sorry to 

 again return to the light of day.^ 



I gathered from Thorgrimmer that until the end 

 of the last century sheep robbers had regularly 

 visited the caves of Kalmanstunga, and in one of 

 the top galleries Geoff and I discovered some remains 

 of an old fireplace. With the aid of a sharp stone 

 we disturbed the earth and found many sheep bones 

 and what appeared to be a piece of a human jaw. 



^ These interesting caves were visited in the previous year 

 by Sir Rider Haggard, with Thorgrimmer as his guide. The 

 result of the journey was the novelist's Eric Brighteyes, a 

 work replete with charming Icelandic tales and excellent 

 descriptions of the country. 



